India’s Bomb and the Stability of South Asia

Abstract

I NDIA'S NUCLEAR energy program dates back to 1944. In March of that year, Dr. Homi Bhabha proposed the establishment of an institute for fundamental research, primarily to start training nuclear experts for India's future nuclear program.1 Thanks to Bhabha's initiative, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research was founded in Bombay in 1945. In 1954, a government-level Department of Atomic Energy was set up, and Dr. Bhabha became its first chairman. India acquired its first reactor, Apsara, in 1956, and a second in 1960. Two power reactors of 200 megawatts capacity each were installed in 1969, and a third reactor with the same capacity became operational in 1973. In 1967, India took a major step in the direction of nuclear self-sufficiency when, with aid from the United Kingdom, a nuclear reprocessing plant for the separation of plutonium from spent fuel was completed.2 The thrust of India's nuclear program has been to achieve higher categories of nuclear capability, culminating in the ability to explode a nuclear device. Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain the rationale for the Indian explosion of 1974: that the explosion was carried out because of New Delhi's rejection of superpower political guarantees and India's desire to go it alone in world politics;3 that it reflected the continuing importance of the power factor in India's post-Nehru foreign policy;4 that it was a reaction to the American rapprochement with the People's Republic of China, which already